Forty Years of BMW R90S

The now-classic BMW R90S of 1974–’76 was an unlikely motorcycle from the Munich-based company. And now, 40 years later, it’s equally unlikely that a group of diehard enthusiasts would gather to celebrate the sporting machine and the men who made it happen.

But that’s exactly what happened in bucolic northern Pennsylvania, where the aged creators of the R90S assembled to address the faithful.

The 900cc BMW R90S was the brainchild of industry luminary Bob Lutz, then head of North American sales for BMW cars and motorcycles. In those days, BMW motorcycles were seen as elegant yet stodgy cross-country tourers.

At the same time, the US market was ablaze with the Big

Four Japanese makers seeking to outgun each other with bigger, better, and faster models. To be competitive, BMW needed to reinvent itself. At the same time, the AMA was working on a new roadracing formula that would come to be known as “Superbike.”

Lutz, now in his eighties and living in Switzerland, produced a video. If the R90S concept was to succeed, he knew it had to fully depart from the old BMW image both in design and performance. The bike would be expensive (more than a BMW 1600 at the time), beautiful, and cause a radical image departure while still retaining the core brand values. But it had to be successful because the BMW motorcycle group back then was unprofitable. If the R90S failed, it might hearken the end of the brand’s two-wheel business. And Mr. Lutz’s tenure.

Fortunately, Lutz sought the services of car and motorcycle designer Hans Muth. Better known to motorcycle enthusiasts as the designer of the Suzuki Katana, Muth had contributed to earlier BMW automobile projects. Muth said he was originally told by Germany to do what Honda does for design because they were so successful. "But when I showed them my sketches," Muth explained, "they said, 'Bah, it looks like a Honda. Give it more character.'"

With this new freedom, Muth’s evolved concept was based on aircraft imagery. “The motorcycle should be like a jet fighter,” he explained. “It should give the rider the thrill of flight. So I focused on the look of the fighter canopy and added additional instruments to the dash. I simply followed my imagination. It had to have a face. Face identification begets character. I had to create a bike for the individual—no cookie-cutter sameness.”

Another player, Udo Gietl—famous for later leading the Team Honda wrecking crew through its 1980s VF/VFR Interceptor AMA Superbike championship period—worked at Butler & Smith, then the US BMW distributor. Recollected Gietl: “We were tech-training dealership personnel at the time but were all racers at heart. We had knowledge of the AMA’s intent for this new Superbike class and convinced our execs that an attempt at the championship using a variation of the new bike could strike quite a marketing coup.” Amazingly, the proposal cleared. But with a tiny team facing the might of the Japanese, success seemed improbable.

Gietl enlisted British racer Reg Pridmore, a known quantity with a background in the US racing BMW 750s. Pridmore doubted that the bike could be “formulized” to fit the rules and questioned its competitiveness against multi-cylinder inlines. But the determination of the crew convinced him it could be done. Through trial and error, working day and night, the team drew horsepower and handling out of the downsized engine (the rules limited displacement to 750cc) and modified chassis.

The rest is history. Pridmore became the inaugural AMA Superbike champion in 1976.

So here, gathered at this estate, are the folks who ushered in the modern era at BMW with a motorcycle that became one of the most iconic of all time.

And that new BMW R nineT parked outside one of the barns? It definitely got their minds reeling...

Ray Blank was Honda’s Senior Vice President—Motorcycle Division. Blank, who retired in 2012, was responsible for product planning, racing, and advertising. A former member of the AMA’s Board of Directors and of the AMA Pro Racing corporation, Blank now spends his time with his collection of older bikes, recapturing his youth and puzzling as to how we stayed alive all those years with such bad brakes, hard tires, and abysmal handling.